Individual film directors, film-makers Books

Much of the visual impact of New Zealand films can be attributed directly to the cinematographer, the creative individual primarily responsible for the look of a film. The cinematographer is both an artist and a craftsman, combining a fine aesthetic sensibility and visual eye with a deep technical u...

Under the supervision of multi Academy Award winner Richard Taylor, Weta Workshop was responsible for the design of the creatures and technology for director Neill Blomkamp's2009 feature film, District 9. Weta Workshop's artists created the physical creature and special make-up effects elements, the...

Wildflower is naturalist, filmmaker and lifelong conservationist Joan Root's gripping life story, a stunning and moving tale of a remarkable modern-day heroine. After twenty years of spectacular, unparalleled wildlife filmmaking together, Joan and Alan Root divorced and a fascinating woman found her...

From his marriage to Ali McGraw, his cocaine bust, the accusations of murder, the friendships with the likes of Jack Nicholson and Dustin Hoffman, to his legendary court case and bust up with Francis Ford Coppola, this is the tell-all autobiography from Robert Evans, the legendary Hollywood producer...

Francis Ford Coppola (USA, b. 1939) is the oldest of the generation of 'movie brats', including Scorsese and Spielberg, who breathed new life into the Hollywood of the 1970s. He revived the glory of the studio age with the legendary Godfather saga (1972 - 90), explored the soul of America at war in ...

This is the first book to explore Stanley Kubrick's archives and the most comprehensive study of the filmmaker to date. In 1968, when Stanley Kubrick was asked to comment on the metaphysical significance of "2001: A Space Odyssey", he replied: 'It's not a message I ever intended to convey in words. ...

With the television hits "The Odd Couple, Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley, "and "Mork & Mindy," and movies like "The Flamingo Kid, Beaches, Pretty Woman, "and" The Princess Diaries "under his belt, Garry Marshall has been among the most successful writers, directors, and producers in America for more ...

"Essential reading for any "Star Trek" and movie fan." -trekmovie.com When Nicholas Meyer was asked to direct the troubled second "Star Trek" film, he was something less than a true believer. A bestselling author and successful director, he had never been a fan of t...

Born in Paris to Polish-Jewish parents, Polanski dealt with the terrors of his childhood - including internment in Auschwitz - by creating an elaborate fantasy world in which he lived as a film star. He would go on to become one of the very best and most infamous directors in Hollywood's history - w...

Jane Campion is one of the most celebrated auteurs of modern cinema and was the first female director to be awarded the prestigious Palme d'Or. Throughout her relatively short career, Campion has received extraordinary attention from the media and scholars alike and has provoked fierce debates on is...

In this uproarious tale of what it is to make movies, we get to explore, at close range, finicky directors, clueless executives, shameless marketers, famous actors, battered screenwriters, and hapless producers crossing paths in such calamitous ways that it's a miracle these films get made at all. W...

Studies American director Gary D. Rhodes eclectic career, including his best-known film, Gun Crazy.

Kenneth Anger: author of Hollywood Babylon, true disciple of Aleister Crowley, former mentor to both Bobby Beausoleil and Mick Jagger, amongst others - and one of the most original and talented film-makers of the 20th Century. BLACK LEATHER LUCIFER presents revelatory texts on the occult, mind-alter...

An illustrated appreciation of the films of Jean Rollin, the cult French film director best-known for his surrealistic depictions of vampires, sex, and horror. With 140 photographs and poster images, including 40 pages in full colour; an interview with Jean Rollin; an introductory essay on his films...

The German filmmaker Alexander Kluge has long promoted cinema's relationship with the goals of human emancipation. Jean-Luc Godard and Filipino director Kidlat Tahimik also believe in cinema's ability to bring about what Theodor W. Adorno once called a "redeemed world," even in the face of new cultu...

The German filmmaker Alexander Kluge has long promoted cinema's relationship with the goals of human emancipation. Jean-Luc Godard and Filipino director Kidlat Tahimik also believe in cinema's ability to bring about what Theodor W. Adorno once called a "redeemed world," even in the face of new cultu...

Whatever people think about Kubrick's work, most would agree that there is something distinctive, even unique, about the films he made: a coolness, an intellectual clarity, a critical edginess, and finally an intractable ambiguity. In an attempt to isolate the Kubrick difference, this book treats Ku...

After an unparalleled string of artistic and commercial triumphs in the 1950s and 1960s, Alfred Hitchcock hit a career lull with the disappointing Torn Curtain and the disastrous Topaz. In 1971, the depressed director traveled to London, the city he had left in 1939 to make his reputation in Hollywo...

In 2005, director Christopher Nolan redefined the Batman legend with Batman Begins, staring Christian Bale as the Gaped Crusader. A fresh, dynamic reboot of the franchise, Batman Begins explored the comic book hero's origins and his evolution from billionaire Bruce Wayne to dark avenger who fights c...

The author focuses on the way that music has infiltrated Hitchcock's thinking as a director, from his earliest silent films to his last works. Music is an underexplored dimension in Hitchcock's works. Taking a different view from most works on Hitchcock, David Schroeder focuses on how an expanded de...

Written exclusively for this collection by today's most significant writers and researchers on Sam Peckinpah, the nine essays in "Peckinpah Today "explore the body of work of one of the most important American filmmakers, revealing new insights into his artistic process and the development of his la...

This provocative and unique anthology analyzes Quentin Tarantino's controversial Inglourious Basterds in the contexts of cinema, cultural, gender, and historical studies. The film and its ideology is dissected by a range of scholars and writers who take on the director's manipulation of metacinema, ...

With Katherine Bigelow making history as the first woman to win an Oscar for directing, is this a new era for female filmmakers? The numbers suggest otherwise. A San Diego University study published last year states that only 9% of Hollywood directors in 2008 were women - the same figure recorded in...

His classic films illuminated everyone's childhood. The theme parks are on every tourist itinerary. The movie empire is one of Hollywood's biggest. Walt Disney is one of the few men who unquestionably changed our culture. And Neal Gabler is the first author to have had complete access to the Disney ...

This first full-length consideration of this noted director's work, "Wes Anderson: Why His Movies Matter" is organized chronologically to encompass all of Anderson's films, from 1996's "Bottle Rocket to Rushmore", "The Royal Tenenbaums", and the 2009 release, "The Fantastic Mr. Fox". This study incl...

The life and film genius of A Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream director Wes Craven Wes Craven is one of the most successful and iconic horror movie directors in Hollywood. His masterful examination of the nightmarish nexus of dreams and reality helped spark a career that has spanned close to forty...

Between 1960 and 1964, the legendary Roger Corman created eight motion pictures that have become known as the 'Poe Cycle', elevating the careers of both himself and Vincent Price to cult status around the world. Nearly half a century later these films are staples in most DVD collections of anyone wh...

Steven Spielberg has become a brand name and a force that extends far beyond the movie screen. Phrases like "phone home" and the music score from "Jaws" are now part of our cultural script, appearing in commercials, comedy routines, and common conversation. Yet few scholars have devoted time to stud...

This is the first-ever illustrated biography of Alfred Hitchcock, the British filmmaker whose groundbreaking thrillers transformed the genre in the twentieth century. Published to coincide with the thirtieth anniversary of his death and the fiftieth anniversary of the release of Psycho, Hitchcock, P...

Clint Eastwood (USA, b. 1930) is a veteran among the grand masters of contemporary American cinema, whose rise through the system took a highly unusual form. After playing iconic roles in Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns of the 1960s, he returned to Hollywood and underwent a controversial reincarna...

Martin Scorsese (USA, b. 1942) is among the most prolific of American directors, having made more than 25 features in a 40-year career that has seen him garner all the highest honours the film world can bestow. Since the success of "Taxi Driver" in 1976, which also marked the start of his long colla...

Steven Spielberg (USA, born 1946) was the boy wonder of the new Hollywood of the 1970s. Taking Orson Welles as his model, he made Duel aged only 25, following it up with a string of successes that brought him the adulation of the studios. As a fan of special effects, and entirely attuned to the shif...

Stanley Kubrick (USA, 1928-99) was a master who took the art of filmmaking further than any other contemporary director, a creative perfectionist whose work now fascinates new generations. He started out as a photographer before moving into film noir aged barely 25, after which the power and origina...

Woody Allen (USA, b. 1935) has been a major comic director since the 1970s. Writer, director and actor, his self-portrayal as a neurotic, intellectual, sex-obsessed, Jewish New Yorker seeking comfort in psychoanalysis brought him immense popular success and acknowledged status as a writer ("Manhatta...

Following the successful formula of previous Phaidon "10x10" titles, this new book in the series will present 100 of the world's most exceptional emerging film directors, selected by internationally prominent festival directors including Frederic Maire/Locarno, Piers Handling & Cameron...

With a visual style inspired by the aesthetics of animation and silent comedy, Tim Burton has reinvented Hollywood genre filmmaking over the past three decades, melding the exotic, the horrific and the comic, and manipulating expressionism and fantasy with the skill of a graphic novelist. Published ...

This title includes an update on the 'ins and outs' of making Zack and Miri make a porno, and a new afterword! Anything but boring, Kevin Smith shares his x-rated thoughts in his diary, telling all in his usual candid, heartfelt and irreverent way! Kevin Smith pulls no punches in this hard-hitting, ...

Clint Eastwood is one of the world's most popular action stars, who has matured into a fine American producer-director. Entertaining, illuminating and packed with information, up to and including "The Changeling", this is the first book to cover his full life in the movies, from his beginn...

Spellbound by Beauty examines Alfred Hitchcock's well known collaborations with the leading ladies of his day, and, in so doing, delves into his creative life and his uniquely curious professional and personal relationships. The result is a singular kind of life story - a book about film and film st...